A giddiness seemed to her to detach itself from this mass of existence,
and her heart swelled as if the hundred and twenty thousand souls that
palpitated there had all at once sent into it the vapour of the passions
she fancied theirs. Her love grew in the presence of this vastness, and
expanded with tumult to the vague murmurings that rose towards her. She
poured it out upon the square, on the walks, on the streets, and the
old Norman city outspread before her eyes as an enormous capital, as a
Babylon into which she was entering. She leant with both hands against
the window, drinking in the breeze; the three horses galloped, the
stones grated in the mud, the diligence rocked, and Hivert, from afar,
hailed the carts on the road, while the bourgeois who had spent the
night at the Guillaume woods came quietly down the hill in their little
family carriages.
They stopped at the barrier; Emma undid her overshoes, put on other
gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty paces farther she got down
from the "Hirondelle."
The town was then awakening. Shop-boys in caps were cleaning up the
shop-fronts, and women with baskets against their hips, at intervals
uttered sonorous cries at the corners of streets. She walked with
downcast eyes, close to the walls, and smiling with pleasure under her
lowered black veil.
For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the most direct road.
She plunged into dark alleys, and, all perspiring, reached the bottom
of the Rue Nationale, near the fountain that stands there. It, is the
quarter for theatres, public-houses, and whores. Often a cart would
pass near her, bearing some shaking scenery. Waiters in aprons were
sprinkling sand on the flagstones between green shrubs. It all smelt of
absinthe, cigars, and oysters.
She turned down a street; she recognised him by his curling hair that
escaped from beneath his hat.
Leon walked along the pavement. She followed him to the hotel. He went
up, opened the door, entered--What an embrace!
Then, after the kisses, the words gushed forth. They told each other the
sorrows of the week, the presentiments, the anxiety for the letters; but
now everything was forgotten; they gazed into each other's faces with
voluptuous laughs, and tender names.
The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat. The curtains
were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and bulged out too
much towards the bell-shaped bedside; and nothing in the world was so
lovely as her brown head and white skin standing out against this purple
colour, when, with a movement of shame, she crossed her bare arms,
hiding her face in her hands.